Buy books, not cars, vehicles

 Every child should have quality education opportunity. Every parent expects and wants their child to have the best education at a level the child can cope and at a cost the parents can afford. Quality education can be achieved under the following conditions:

 Qualified teachers

The teacher must be qualified to teach the subject or the grade level within his professional qualification and ability. If the teacher is unqualified or under-qualified to teach a grade or a subject, he won’t contribute towards quality teaching or quality learning opportunity.  

A teacher may be qualified but if the class size is very large then all his effort towards quality teaching is of no effect. 

Qualified teachers with smaller class sizes or low teacher per student ratio are essential ingredients to delivering quality teaching. Overcrowding means very poor teacher per student ratio. There are supposedly over 45,000 teachers in the country and there are some 2 million students to take care of. In general that puts 1 teacher per 40 odd students across the country.  

The teacher per student ratio may vary from class to class and school to school. The Papua New Guinea Development Strategic Plan 2010-2030 projected teachers and support staff population to reach 110,000 by 2030. The teacher per student ratio in each school, grade, district or province vary depending on the enrolment.  

However, we know that teachers are leaving the system at a faster rate than they can be trained and effectively replaced because of frustrations experienced regarding salaries and conditions. Even the ones faithfully serving in the system cannot be happily retained and therefore, overcrowding is likely to continue until new teachers are trained up and corresponding infrastructure in every school is improved.  

In the meantime the teacher factor in an overcrowded classroom under dilapidated classrooms and scarce teaching and learning resource environment are likely to continue to negatively impact on the quality of teaching delivered by the teachers and subsequent quality of learning by the students.

Prescribed textbooks

A teacher can contribute positively towards quality teaching in a subject provided there is adequate supply of prescribed textbooks.  

The current textbook per student ratio (1 textbook shared between 7 or more students) means the majority of the students in a class have no access to the prescribed textbook which is being used in the class.  

Whatever content material that the teacher can’t use during class could be assigned for home work out of class.  

When students do not have access to a textbook they are denied access to an information source and consequently they are frustrated and lose interest in their work. 

If students and teachers are denied relevant and prescribed textbooks then they are disadvantaged.  

Many of our leaders spend huge amounts of money on buying school trucks or vehicles emblazoned with ‘Donated by Member for Timbuktu’. Some leaders supply uniforms and proudly claim that they have spent a huge amount of money in education. 

Sure, but the poor students are examined on what they learn from teaching and learning activities (cognitive or intellectual activities), which depend on the quality of teachers utilising prescribed textbooks and other essential materials.  

This writer has been involved in writing Grade 12 examination questions in the past and never for once would one find a question asking the students about how proud they are in their uniforms or how many vehicles were bought by their local MP.  

The national examination tests students’ knowledge learnt (intellectual or cognitive domain), not on the aesthetics or the paraphernalia that do not make any direct contribution to quality of learning achieved by the students.  

Buying school uniforms or vehicles is serving purposes other than improving the quality of teaching and learning, they are mutually exclusive. The pass rate in the examination does not depend on aesthetic or the external make-overs.  

If the engine of a vehicle needs a thorough overhaul and refitting, then by merely repainting the vehicle does very little to give it a new leash of life.  

Similarly, dressing up the students with immaculate set of uniforms do very little to improve the students’ quality of learning (cognition and level of intellectual achievements).

On the other hand, if the funding for buying textbooks is diverted by an authority to meet other obligations then the student is denied quality teaching and learning resources to enhance their learning.  

If you don’t invest in quality education, you will not get quality education.  

Quality is a relative term. Quality here not only relates to textbooks per se, but includes all other teaching and learning resources available to the students, for example: Library facility, Science laboratory equipment and consumables, 

Practical skills workshop equipment and materials, and home economics laboratory and materials. 

Take another example: You cannot teach agriculture on the chalkboard but compliment that with model farms for students to have practical appreciation of the theory taught in real life so both the theory and practical complement each other.  

Quality education does not depend on school building infrastructure but the eventual outcome of cognitive interaction and intellectual activities taking place in a classroom.  

School libraries in many schools are in a sorry state and similar observations can be made of other facilities because PNG is happily in­vesting in areas where quality education don’t count and yet miraculously speak and expect our children to achieve quality education.

 Students’ Performance in examination

Whether the students acquired the intended body of knowledge contained in the national curriculum can be best established based on the students’ academic performance in nationally-sanctioned school exam­ination at Grade 10 or Grade 12.  

School examination determines the level of achievement by each student under a normalised distribution curve where every student’s performance in the said examination is plotted. The more brighter and able ones are located on the right of the bell-curve and those who are academically weak are placed nationally on the left of the bell-curve.  

The greater majority are found in the middle of the curve.  

Those placed on the right side of the curve are students who score As and Bs, while those on the left side of the curve score Ds and Es.

  Those in the middle of the curve theoretically scored Cs or ‘average’ performers. Students strive to score As and Bs to achieve a sufficiently higher Grade Point Average (GPA) in order to be eligible for higher education placement or selection for further and continuing education.  

The quality control mechanism in school is the periodic supervision carried out by the head teachers or the senior teachers to ensure teaching and learning delivered is at an acceptably high level.  

Even the involvement of Standard Officers from each province or district to visit every teacher in every school is critical to ensure that quality teaching is delivered by the teacher.  

If the funding for Standard Officers to travel (air, sea or road) to each outlying school is diverted to service another cost area, the very quality control measure is removed so we can’t cry foul if teachers are not inspected to see if they are actually teaching or if teachers are physically in class teaching.  

Similar argument for Standards Officers stands for availability of quality textbooks (or reading resources) for both teachers and students.  

If you don’t invest in quality control mechanisms by funding the Standards Officers (inspectors) to inspect teachers or provide housing for their shelter and vehicles for their mobility to visit schools then don’t expect to get quality education for your children. 

Quality education doesn’t come from buying uniforms for students or buying vehicles for schools.  

Any effort to develop students intellectually will help achieve quality education.  

Any head teacher who buys textbooks for his school and encourages reading is making a huge contribution and investment to provide quality education opportunity to students. Student performance at national examinations in terms of pass rate is a measure of the quality education delivered.  

The pass rate from the examination does not depend on school uniform or number of school vehicles as a quality variable in a quality education equation or even large dormitories/classrooms built.

Special appeal is hereby made to the leaders to use their District Services Improvement Programme (DSIP) funds to build libraries and buy books to fill the libraries or even fund internal teacher in-service programme or sponsorship for teachers to upgrade their academic qualifications.  

• n To be continued